Monthly Archives: December 2012

(an elegy to the 23-year-old victim of gang-rape and also the two-year-old victim of rape…both of whom passed away today, hopefully for a better world)

A Few Threads

Oh maa, is this new sari for me?
Look at the colours,
feel the texture,
the embroidery is so fine
and delicate.
These threads
speak in tongues
and carry tales
I want to sing;
I want to wrap their softness
and many-coloured moods
around me
and float like a feather
as it free-falls through the air
on its way towards a head-on collision with the grass.
Yes,
my Diwali looks brighter already.

Tell me again, nani,
what exactly did Draupadi pray to Krishna
as her soul was being stripped
of every of dignity she possessed
in front of the eyes of a blind court?
Did she howl in pain?
Did she beg for a few strands
to cover her modesty,
her breasts,
her pussy?

I did,
you know.
I prayed to every God I knew,
using up the mantras of my childhood memories;
the agarbatti smells of your daily worship,
maa,
I used them to numb my senses
as I screamed
while the beasts tore into my body with savage glee.
I howled in pain and shame,
papa,
as they ripped apart my gut
and clawed off my breasts
and bloodied the nation with gore.

And I begged
and I begged
and I begged
for a few threads
on my back
as I lay shivering in the cold
on the road.

Nobody stopped,
nobody cared,
many people looked,
but no one bothered
to throw a few threads
of dignity my way
along with their
looks of pity
and fear
and horror
and shame.

Maa,
you cover me with sheets now,
and there is newsprint
where my gut once used to be.
I’ve lost the name you gave me,
but I have a few fancier ones instead.
I can hear loud words, maa,
angry words;
words of rage
and pain
and protest
being yelled out
in one big collective wail
of rage
and pain
and protest.
Or maybe that’s just the morphine talking.

Papa,
I believe we’re in Singapore?
How many boxes of dreams
did you help load on the aircrafts
to fly all the way here
without ever knowing
that one day,
you too
would be here with me?
Is Singapore beautiful?
Is it everything you dreamed of
and more?

It’s okay.
Don’t tell me.
I can see for myself now.
I can see these tall skyscrapers
and trains speeding through the skies
and women wearing the most fashionable clothes
I’d only ever seen in movies
and magazines.

I…
I don’t know.
I don’t know about castration
or death by hanging.
I don’t know about lethal injections
or shoving iron rods up their ass
and scrambling their intestines.
I don’t know about lynching them
or feeding them to hungry hyenas
or to an angry mob.
All I know
is that I wanted to live…

I can hear the voices
of my sisters in pain
screaming “Enough is enough!”

but

enough of what?

Today,
my two-year-old sister
died with me,
leaving another scar
on our Motherland’s face.
Did she get a name?
Wasn’t she a laadli,
a shona,
a pari
a rani,like I was once,
before becoming a Damini,
an Amanat,
a Nirbhaya?